A Human Strategy, Matt Berry, aphorism 53
53
Man is the reasonable ape which will swing from tree to tree to get the banana, but when satisfied, will sit and brood about how his logic should not have to swing about with such indignity ... should not have to leave one vine for another, for there is no real “connection” after all. What he really should do, he decides, is find one infinitely long vine on an infinitely tall tree by which he might have the whole jungle at his disposal, or to hell with it, he won’t swing at all. This lasts for a few hours or so, depending upon the metabolism of the ape, but if he is a professional logician, then his metabolism is quite low, and so the hours of non-foraging can be quite long, but not so extensive that they cannot be calculated with precision: he broods, without fail, between the hours of nine to five ... then leaps to the nearest vine, confused by his unreasonable craving for bananas, but which he quickly and decisively refutes again by eating a few.
Man is the reasonable ape which will swing from tree to tree to get the banana, but when satisfied, will sit and brood about how his logic should not have to swing about with such indignity ... should not have to leave one vine for another, for there is no real “connection” after all. What he really should do, he decides, is find one infinitely long vine on an infinitely tall tree by which he might have the whole jungle at his disposal, or to hell with it, he won’t swing at all. This lasts for a few hours or so, depending upon the metabolism of the ape, but if he is a professional logician, then his metabolism is quite low, and so the hours of non-foraging can be quite long, but not so extensive that they cannot be calculated with precision: he broods, without fail, between the hours of nine to five ... then leaps to the nearest vine, confused by his unreasonable craving for bananas, but which he quickly and decisively refutes again by eating a few.